Hong Kong’s market-based national identity: Harbinger of a global future?

Let us briefly review where we have been in this book. The book’s introductory chapter discussed how many Hong Kong people, unlike people elsewhere, have not had a sense of belonging to a nation. It asked why people throughout the world feel that they belong to a nation – a recent development in history – and why Hong Kong people, perhaps uniquely, have felt that they did not belong to a nation. It also examined the discourses of state and market, and how most people in the world have been shaped by both of these discourses, but how many Hong Kong people have been shaped only by the discourse of the market, giving some of them a particular incomprehension as to what it means to “belong to a nation.”